Soap Opera Scotland's Game of Gnomes - Series Oneby Rab Christie

Genre:DramaSwearwords: A couple of mild ones.Description:EPISODE EIGHT - The Caps versus the Socks._____________________________________________________________________Let’s face it, politics is a team game. But no one is sure who the teams are any more. We started this serial with the One Nations (the socks), the Ineffective Opposition (the ‘flat’ caps) and #TeamMacGnome (the jocks). And obviously if there are three teams in this game it’s one team too many. Politics is like a marriage in that respect. But I wouldn’t like to take the analogy too far. Life, after all, is not a team game. It’s just life.

But we are in the business of politics. So I should remind you that to start with #TeamMacGnome were a sort of rainbow coalition with their joint aim being freedom for Gnomes and anti-austerity – which meant they were about as popular as Greeks bearing debts to the International Gnome Monetary Fund or the Central GnomeWorld Bank.

The emergence of the new leader of the Ineffective Opposition potentially threatened all this. Being the Ineffective Opposition it took them months to elect their new leader, and then they elected someone they didn’t even like. Well, obviously the gnomes on the street (who foolishly had been given the vote in the matter, due to the fact that they hadn’t voted for the Ineffective Opposition in the General Election) voted for the new leader, but the Gnomes in the MOP couldn’t see him far enough away. They didn’t want a new broom to sweep clean. Especially not a new broom who’d been a thorn in their backsides for decades.

In my opinion, and what do I know, the Old New Leader (who became known as ‘Only’ very quickly, Gnomes being fond of acronyms and because he didn’t have a lot of support in the parliament) rode in on the aftershock of the Hope over Fear ‘ticket’ waved so successfully by #TeamMacGnome. He analysed what they did. He claimed his grassroots credentials. He went to the grassroots and waved new green shoots in front of them. He shouted about fairness, social justice and anti-austerity. All the things that the Ineffective Opposition had failed to shout out about before.

The rest of the Ineffective Opposition stood around like rabbits in the headlights. They were sure that gnomes hadn’t voted for them because they (the gnome voters) wanted what the One Nation gnomes were offering, but coloured red rather than blue. They were so out of touch with gnomic values that they really couldn’t understand it was BECAUSE they were just the One Nationists in red that gnomes hadn’t voted for them.

How could they have got it so wrong? Perhaps because they’d stopped listening and started believing their own ‘New, improved’ press. They’d spun themselves into oblivion and, if you don’t mind me interjecting here, I think it served them right. They had de-constructed and re-constructed the word ‘representative’ until they were no longer representative of any gnome outside of their own little elite.

#TeamMacGnome kept at the forefront of their banner the belief that they were there to serve. To represent the actual will of the gnome, not to interpret and re-frame it into their own brand of One Nationism where the word ‘free’ has become a way to manipulate gnomes through economics. Free and Freedom did once stem from the same root word. Not any more. Not in Gnomeland.

And so Only the Lonely as he was now called, got up on his soapbox. He didn’t wear a tie. He wouldn’t sing along with One Nation’s national anthem. He laughed in the face of privilege and he ran a campaign straight out of the Gnome Indie Ref box. But this time it wasn’t about Independence and self-determination for ordinary gnomes. It was about turning an Ineffective Opposition into an Effective Opposition.

Good luck with that one, mate!

Only the Lonely won on a landslide. Outside the MOP. Inside, they were gunning for him big-time. Which took a lot of the pressure off #TeamMacGnome. And threatened to change the very tone of this whole season of Game of Gnomes. Indeed you might be wondering where Scott and Adam and the rest of the #Team fit into this story at all any more.

Don’t worry. Scott’s no fool. He organised the free movement of gnomes across the entire known Gnomic world in his summer holidays, after all. Give him a bit of credit. Right now, #TeamMacGnome are sitting waiting to see if Only the Lonely will work with them, or if he’ll crash and burn in his own contrail. He’s the man the media love to hate. And he has one great failing. One might say it’s a tragic flaw if we were being Shakespearean about it. But we’re not. His problem? He believes in One Nation.

Because it seems that while the Gnome World Cup of Rugby was in full flow, Only the Lonely was as unaware as the Prime Mover that Four Nations make up Gnomeland. But then, Only the Lonely and the Prime Mover have no time for sport. The Prime Mover is only interested as long as we can ‘sing while we’re winning’ and he’s hosting the tournament. Some prescient gnomes asked in advance: What will happen if the Southrons don’t win? Will it be like Gnome Slav Winter Olympics – when the home team didn’t win the Ice Hockey, all manner of war was visited on near neighbours? Ah, things will be a bit more subtle in GnomeNation, believe me. The majority of One Nation gnomes knew that it was written in the history books that the Southrons would win the Trophy. They’d bought the competition after all. But wait a minute…

Scott MacGnome understands sport. He knows about winning and he knows about losing. He knows all about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s his cultural heritage. He also understands gnomes. And he is there, in the background, planning his next move. It goes something like this.

The OneNation team was slung out on their arses, never even getting out of the pool. Which meant that the Southron gnomic media lost all interest in the Gnome Rugby World Cup and were out looking for something else to focus on. The chance of one of the four ‘home’ nations winning at the end of the day is slim, though this has been a year of ‘it couldn’t happens happening’ but even if they did, it would only inflame the One Nation media even further. In the meantime, it’s back to politics with a vengeance.

The battle may well be between #TeamMacGnome and Only the Lonely and it won’t be for who sits where in the Parliament. It will be for the hearts and minds of the ordinary gnome. Only the Lonely is out canvassing for support, but don’t you think that all these ‘guests’ who are now in residence in Gnomeland, especially those up in the Northron constituencies, might prefer the party who helped save them rather than listening to a record which, while not exactly broken, somehow isn’t a dance tune from any era and who is committed to not recognising any differences between the poor in one place and the poor in another. This is his great argument against Independence. All the poor are of equal value. Okay. Let’s call him on it. If the Ineffective Opposition party, reborn as an Effective Opposition party, think everyone is equal under the sun, what are they going to do to help give them houses, jobs and a decent standard of living? The proto-effective Opposition talks big. But talk is cheap. Nuclear deterrents are not.

Only the Lonely wants votes. He wants One Nation behind him so he can get most votes. He will take some convincing that giving gnomes independence and self-determination is the route to his goal. If he really thinks that by spouting red One Nation crap at the Northron gnomes he’ll hit pay dirt, he’s got another think coming.

Scott’s big play is to get Only the Lonely to do right by the new gnomes, and make sure that they become enfranchised. Then he might do the math and work out that it would be possible to mount an Effective Opposition in the Southron Nation without having to cajole, woo or frighten the Northron gnomes into submission. And at that point, you mark my words, he’ll drop his opposition to Independence like a rock. Like all Southrons he really sees the Northrons as just a means to an end. Don’t get fooled by all that international gnomehood bullshit – not until the theory is matched by practice.

Scott has already lined up his email: Dear ONLY. It has come to my attention that you claim the precedence of international gnomehood over independent nationhood. If I can show you a way to allow the spectre of independence to slip away, while assuring you of enough votes to win the day so that the proto-Effective Opposition becomes the next Government, will you be prepared to work with me to achieve this goal. The first step is to take our international gnomes into our bosoms and give them the vote. I await your reply at your earliest convenience. Yours cordially, Scott MacGnome.

Scott doesn’t want to be sitting in MOP for any more time than strictly necessary. Five years will already be four years too many. But what will it take to break up the One Nation myth? The jury is out on that one. Another cliff-hanger, eh, just when you were least expecting one.

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About the Author

G. R. Christie (Rab) is from a farming background. His political awakening started in 1996 with the BSE crisis and matured in 2001 with Foot and Mouth. He then studied journalism and politics and he now combines the pitchfork with the pen – or the crap with the computer!

Rab is familiar to many from his political/cultural commentary/rants on McRenegades and is editor in waiting at Deveron Press – launching in December 2015. He’s having a go at satire with the latest McStorytellers McSerial, Soap Opera Scotland’s Game of Gnomes – Series One.